NOTE: This page is subject to more
than the usual
number of
broken links because of WalMart's aggressive
legal strategies. For example,
the Walmart versus Women site mentioned below
appears to have been
snuffed!ALSO NOTE:
Stay up to date with WalMart-related
posts on my Environmental Geography
blog.

I am not a big
advocate of boycotts, but
staying out of Wal-Mart is a
good idea. It is not an ordinary
boycott. Cutting ties to Wal-Mart is a way of refusing
to participate
in a very damaging
economic practice. Wal-Mart -- the largest company in
the world --
operates
in a way that increases government welfare spending,
contributes to
suburban
sprawl, drives local companies out of business,
decreases employment in
both
retail and manufacturing while lowering the wages in
both sectors, and
increases
our tendency to consume natural resources that we do not
need.

Many people continue to support Wal-Mart because they do
not think they
can afford to shop anywhere else. There is an element of
truth to this,
and of course, it is part of Wal-Mart's plan -- kill off
every low-cost
competitor. In short, Wal-Mart creates poverty and then
it becomes the
store of last resort for victims of poverty. I began my
"loathe affair"
with the company while I was still a struggling graduate
student, so I
sympathize with this argument, but I have managed to
stay away for more
than a decade.

Blogger and fellow coffee
fanatic Jeff Hess has a great idea for those who cannot
afford to avoid
WalMart altogther but who want to send a message: just stop
buying
toothpaste there!

See WalMart ... The Movie. This film
is both
a cinematic event and a social event. Small-group screenings
and
discussions are being held throughout the country!

If all of this sounds far-fetched, browse the web
sites
below for more information. See the WalMart
list at DMOZ for more than two dozen anti-WalMart
sites. Very few
companies have generated more antagonism than WalMart.

WalMart is about to open a second super store in the small town
of
Raynham, Massachusetts. Some objections were raised when the
idea was
first proposed, but Raynham is now on its way to becoming the
most
WalMartized town in New England, and perhaps the most
WalMartized town
of its size in the world.

India appears to be WalMart's next frontier. The blog
Indian Inheritance's article "Wal-Mart
and its entry to India
" offers a number of reasons for Indians oppose this, and I'm
proud to
say
that this page is cited as a resource.

The PBS show Frontline
asks
the question, "
Is
WalMart good for America? " The discussion board includes
some of
the most cogent critiques and defenses of the company that I
have found
online (where many critiques and defenses are passionate, but
far from
cogent).

WalMart has finally
decided to take on its critics, corrupting NPR in the
process. Read about it at
Clamor Magazine .

WalMart is one of the financial backers of the
Pioneer Institute , a "think tank" that is bent on
dismantling
public education. Unfortunately,
PI is very powerful is "liberal" Massachusetts, where it has
great
influence
on the boards of education and higher
education
.

Not all big box stores are created equal. Since 1997, I have
shopped at
Costco as a way to stretch my miserly faculty pay check (see
Pioneer
Institute note above). I felt a little guilty, but decided, "At
least
it is not WalMart." Recently, I learned that there is a reason I
enjoy
Costco more -- it is run much more fairly. Read Moira Herbst's
article
The Costco
Challenge to learn how Costco keeps prices low while
treating its
workers well. She describes how angry some financial analysts
are at
Costco CEO Jim Senegal. He pays workers more and himself less
(this is
a CEO who can live on just a half million bucks a year!), allows
some
workers to be unionized, and still runs a profitable business.
This
makes Wall Street analysts very angry, even though stockholders
seem
quite satisfied.

Sprawl-Busters
is
the information clearinghouse for campaigns against big
box stores of
all kinds, of which WalMart is the most prolific and
damaging. Read
"The
Case Against Sprawl" on its home page for an overview of
the problems
created
by big box stores.

WalMart Sucks used to
be an
online forum for discussions about WalMart. Opponents and
defenders of the company made their cases here. I have learned -
from WalMartSucks.org
- that my
earlier suspicions were correct: WalMart has been shutting down
protest
domains by outlawyering and outspending these non-profit sites.
They
might be from the
"land of
the free
and the home of the brave," but freedom is not something they
value!

The
WalMart
You
Don't Know is a carefully researched and balanced article
from
the December 2003 issue
of the business magazine Fast Company. It is the best
explanation I
have
seen of the ruthless approach that WalMart takes to its
suppliers,
which
in turn harms the employees of those companies. It provides
several
detailed examples of behavior I had heard about when I worked in
manufacturing. The pickle jar that nearly killed Vlasic is the
most
amazing of these stories.

So many of its employees need government support that some
larger
Wal-Mart stores have welfare offices in the store -- for the
people who
work there. One Congressional study entitled "Everyday Low
Wages"
estimates that a single Wal-Mart "employing" 200
people would cost taxpayers
over $400,000 in added social spending.

Just to show that I have a sense of humor, I am providing this
free
link to Sora Packir's non-political
Wal-Mart
Appreciation Page . Some of her "Fun Things" ideas sound
like a lot
of fun; if I'm ever inside a WalMart again, I would like to try
some of
them.

Dunkin'
Donuts is not in the same league as Wal-Mart, but
it is bad for the
environment, coffee farmers, and America. See my Coffee Hell page to
find out why I
think so.

MOST
OF THE TIME, I'M NOT THINKING ABOUT WAL-MART!
SEE MY BLOGS FOR MY IDEAS ON GEOGRAPHY